


The Most Familiar Strangers

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Novel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-08
Updated: 2007-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-19 16:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12413700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: The epic lives and times of James Sirius Potter and Ted Remus Lupin, from Hogwarts to beyond. Mischief, adventures, oddities, and strange facial hair ahead. Some liberties taken with the ages of the characters and eventual slash.





	The Most Familiar Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

** The Most Familiar Stranger **

**Chapter One**

James cannot recall the first time they had ever met, the memory some kind of riddle he cannot solve. It's quite mad that he does not know when he first learned Teddy’s name because, to him, the words Ted Remus Lupin have always held meaning, like the name is an innate thing within him. Teddy is Teddy to James the way eating with him and learning with him and playing with him and the existence of magic is faultless, natural fact.

And Teddy's arrival for dinner is only a continuation of the parts of James's life that he thinks will never be snatched away.

***

Two boys stand, face to face, in the light of a flickering flame, like mirror images. One of them guards a tall fireplace, a scrawny, dark-haired boy soldier, almost. The other boy emerges from a flame, trips on his own foot, and falls chin-first into a pile of soot. Head lifting from the floor, groggy, he murmurs, "Hello, James. Fancy meeting you here."

"Teddy, you look like you just sprouted a beard," says James, gesturing rather rudely at his chin, because the soot blackening Teddy’s chin indeed resembles such.

"Grandmum can't make it to dinner today."

"Well I suppose it's more like a goatee, but it looks like some kind of facial hair anyway," James ponders aloud, hand cupping his chin thoughtfully. He glances at Teddy. "Or a cross between a beard and a goatee." 

He is pulling himself up from the floor of the fireplace and using his sleeve to wipe clean the curious dark smudge from his chin, ignoring James's pleading expression. Noticing the ashes that found their way into the threads of his oversized green jumper, he smacks his chest and shoulders exasperatedly as more soot fall from his soft, pale brown hair. A real goatee sprouts from below his mouth when he finishes with preening himself and closes his eyes in concentration, luring cackles of glee from James's lips. "That," he explains, almost bossily, slight smugness seeping into his quiet voice, "is a real goatee."

"Show-off." James sees Teddy glancing around the living room as though in search of a lost object, and answers, "Dad's caught up with Auror stuffs. He'll be back for dinner though. Some Voldemort worshiper isn't going to give him any trouble." He does not miss Teddy's wince at the name Voldemort, and remembers that while his father had caused Lord Voldemort's death, Lord Voldemort had been the cause of Teddy's parents' deaths. He feels something deeper, deeper than his nine-year-old self, crumple inside him when he remembers this, and feels stupid, idiotic beyond believe.

Teddy's changeable eyes are as opaque as ever again as they skim over James, surveying the blood rushing into his thin cheeks. They blink, slowly, and he says, "You have some soot on your cheek." His hand reaches out and his fingertips graze the top of James's cheek, wiping away the light smudge marking it. "It's gross."

"Thanks, Teddy," he replies, dryly. Sometimes he just doesn't understand the older boy, like the two years between them were a lifetime, a chasm. "You're my hero, Ted Remus Lupin."

The two boys sit in silence, on a snug orange sofa in a spacious living room formed by warm amber walls. On the mantelpiece above the are some framed photographs from days James know are bygone--a picture of his parents' wedding, with his mum utterly radiant with her fingers laced into his dad's and his dad smiling a grin so broad it seems to come off the photo, a picture of the entire family, from Granddad Weasley to Teddy to himself to his aunts and uncles, and an older, fading photo of the original Order of the Phoenix. Teddy's dad is in there and Teddy looks quite like him, only without the lines of age in his face and the sadness in his wide eyes. 

And absently Teddy is changing his hair and eye colors from light brown to electric blue, maroon to yellow. The other looks at the spectacle, envy lurking in the hazel of his eyes. Teddy appears to be taken back by this when he notices, asking, "Am I bothering you?"

James shakes his head, though he knows he is bitter because Teddy's magical ability is as natural to him as frowning disapprovingly at others.

Instantaneous calm seizes over Teddy as he switches back to his normal appearance, all brown hair and light eyes and thin face and absurd maturity. "You're not a very good liar. It's scribbled all over your face."

"Can't change my face, can I?" James cannot wrench the sourness from his tone. "Can't do anything else either."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm a Squib."

"Really?" he inquires, primly. 

He thinks Teddy is paling drastically and tranquility returns to him. The sudden urges to shout at him melt away. "I don't have any magic. I haven't done anything. I'm as magical as a rock. A grey, nonmagical rock."

"You're just pitying yourself now," Teddy says in a reproving manner. "Stop it."

"B-b-b-but Teddy..." he stammers. "What if I can never be a wizard?" His eyes are wide, unbelievably young.

"Your family will still love you." Teddy smiles encouragingly, a friend and reassuring curve of the mouth that reminds James of his dad. "They won't care about stuff like this, James."

James's mum enters the living room, a child in each hand, beaming. James swallows his reply immediately and gives the faintest of grimaces, a fleeting twist to his lips before it's gone. "Pleasure seeing you again, Teddy. Where's Mrs. Tonks?" she inquires, casting a rather suspicious glance at James through bright brown eyes in the meantime. Her red hair, tied out of the way and ending between her shoulder blades and the small of her back, is striking against a set of royal blue robes.

"What's cooking, Mum?" asks James before Teddy can reply and possibly give away the contents of their conversation, eagerly sniffing the air.

"James, you sound just like Ron when you do that. I had to share a house with him for seventeen years, so I'm rather sick of him..." Her son, laughing, nods. Her intentions are clear. "Ooh, I'm telling him you said that..."

But his mother is a step ahead of him, as usual. "Then I'll be forced to share with him how you locked yourself in a broom closet and cried when a spider got on Mr. Puddles." Gulping, James imagines a rather evil gleam in her eyes, which is soon swept away by the image of Ron Weasley falling over his chair guffawing, with Aunt Hermione looking slightly displeased.

"Mr. Puddles hates spiders!" he protests.

"I'll be sure to tell him that."

"You won't, Mum," James gasps.

"Won't I?" He is, not for the first time, struck by the pure evil that is womankind.

"Won't she?" James says, turning to the other boy worriedly.

His bitten lips curl in an unsuppressed smile, though he is still a shock of enigma to James at the same time. He is saved from giving an answer by a loud cracking sound coming from the center of the room. Anticipation is alight in James's eyes as he presses his palms to his sides, waiting for the next movement of magic to arrive after the crack. Harry Potter, in his Auror's robes, has Apparated into the room, figure looming over scrawny the two boys like an older shadow of James, green-eyed and bespectacled.

James exclaims, "Dad! Catch any bad guys today?"

"Yeah, all is well." His father's eyes are both weary and bright, the two qualities merging into something secret. All is well. He knows those words, which are a secret code, a magic incantation between his mum and dad. It means that when they think he is asleep and not perching at the top of the stairs, their hands will touch in the living room and they'll discuss things not meant for his ears in hushed, urgent whispers. 

But James will hear.

***

The entire family sits around a rectangular table, forks and knives in their hands, for dinner. "I heard that Victoire will be going to Hogwarts this year," says his mum.

Hogwarts, the magical place where his dad came into his own and met his mum. It has always been a place of almost legend to James, a place that he may never know. He feels constricted to his seat on the hard wooden chair, peering with mild interest at his mum, whose wand is directing forkfuls of chicken at Lily and Albus. 

His dad smiles at Teddy warmly. "Aren't you going to Hogwarts this year?" It dawns on James. He chokes on his carrots, those foul, evil carrots, and watches Teddy, who is most definitely not choking on his carrots.

"I... got my invitation to Hogwarts today." Teddy is pale as paper when he whispers. Teddy--Hogwarts, thinks James, biting his tongue hard and swallowing and holding tight to his chair and squeezing his eyes shut and Anything to keep the pain in his chest away. But his eyes open and water in spite of his best efforts, seeing too clearly Teddy's eyes, but they are so unbelievably yellow they burn him.

Your family will still love you, echoes Teddy's voice in his mind. That is why he had comforted him, the reason for the sympathy. That's the truth, isn't it? Time seems to stop dead in its tracks when they lock gazes, hazel to yellow and back, though it never lasts long enough to drain James of the terror and anger that engulf him. Everyone seems to be moving on like the minute hand on the face of a clock passing the hour but he stays in place, alone, full of angry words, and completely empty at once.

"James..."

He does not bother to decipher whose voice it is. The gazes of his entire family are concerned and upon him. It can't be him and it isn't him--not if he's leaving for good. No. "Y-y-you're leaving me?"

Teddy's lips part to form the syllables of his reply, yet his throat emits not even the softest sound. Speak, says James silently. The other does not, for he is Teddy Lupin again, after the shock of James's reaction, impossibly perfect in his gentle but slightly icy calm.

James can't control himself. Just for once he wants to see that tranquil surface shattered, rippled, so he can see what lies beneath.

His dad's eyes blaze green in alarm as he takes in James's bleak countenance and a low, treacherous rumble coming from above the dinner table. " _Protego_!" shouts Harry Potter, wand in his hand in half an instant, pointing at Teddy though he is too late.

"No!" It is James's own voice, dry, wheezing from a scratchy throat. Futile, his arm and outstretched fingers reach for the boy across from him, never quite touching upon the unmoving form.

The ceiling above Teddy had already caved and fallen on to the defenseless boy.

***

All the knowledge lodged inside his mind is lofty and intangible to him. Then his eyes fly open slowly and his hands are running through the desolate space around him, searching, He has feeling of crisp sheets and woolen blankets on his skin, as an unbearable ache crashes down onto him when his world comes into focus. His senses are acute to the sharp pain that seizes his body.

It is a room painted pale blue with a mismatching rug.

The voice in, or of, his mind asks, _who is he?_ Ted Remus Lupin, metamorphmagus, orphaned son of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, godson of Harry Potter.

_Where are you, Remus Lupin, orphaned son of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, godson of Harry Potter?_ It occurs to Teddy that his mind-voice is really quite irritating. He is in the guest bedroom of the Potters' cottage, he answers, with shades of _of course_ in his reply.

_That's very, very sane indeed._ Having strange solitary conversations with oneself is _not_ considered normal, even when one is best friends with a James Sirius Potter.

_Oh Merlin, James._ This probably involves him, one way or another. Groaning, the boy buries his face in his hands and inches his way off the narrow bed. Both his feet touch the clothed floor and his head is so strangely light that this all feels like a dreamy, surrealist hallucination that will float away from his consciousness the moment he awakens. He does not wake up, and instead begins to make fractional, swerving steps towards the door. His fingers at last wrap around the cold bronze doorknob. He can swear that the door is further away from the bed than he had previously anticipated. 

The door makes a loud _click_ sound and opens at his will. 

"Teddy, Teddy, Teddy! You're awake!" A deeply remorseful James, pointing out the obvious as only he can, rams him against the wall, bringing color, and more pain, into what he thought was a delirium. "Sorry," he murmurs, but Teddy somehow gets the feeling that he isn't apologizing about the tackle. He trembles from the weight of James's body on his and the pull of gravity lulling him downwards. It is uncanny to be close to anyone at all in this way, in some kind of hard embrace, now that he is no longer little and young and innocent—like James is. 

He watches the small boy through the strands of hair falling into his eyes, hiding his expression. He is an apparition against the dark. He haunts.

"What do you mean? What happened?" 

"You said you got an invitation to Hogwarts and I made the ceiling fall on you. Not purposely, mind, because I'm so horrid, Teddy. Horrid, horrid, horrid. And deserve to be beaten over the head with a pink cauldron or something," James rambles.

Teddy smiles, even though he hasn't an inkling of what had happened as the other jumped from detail to detail. "You idiot," he says, hastily, giving James's head a light swat. "Sorry, can't get the pink cauldron on such short notice, you, err, villain."

"You should just leave me and go to Hogwarts. I've got no complaints now," says James, in all his nine-year-old dignity.

"I'm--leaving you?" Teddy, confused, repeats. "Why do you have no complaints about my--leaving?"

The other simply states, "You're leaving for Hogwarts. I made the ceiling fall."

"I'm not leaving you," he argues, smiling still, "and you're pouting."

"Am not!" says James. Obviously pouting.

"Am too!"

"Am not!"

"Am too!" he replies, calmly.

Deeply offended, James hollers, "Am not! Am not! Am not!"

"All right, all right." He pats the younger boy on the shoulder meekly, not expecting a sort of outburst like this, exactly like he did not anticipate the strange non-embrace they had shared minutes ago. He did not notice James's anxieties about magic either, before that dinner, and there is a chasm between them now that he doesn't quite understand. "Has anyone ever told you that you're like a maelstrom?"

"A mail's storm? What's that?"

"A maelstrom."

"Sounds like something only Hagrid could love."

"Nevermind." He sighs, and folds his thin arms across his chest, lips twisting in a pondering purse, for something about James's predicament feels a little _off_ to him, like a heavy bronze key that will not fit into a slender lock. Almost interrogatively, he declares, “So you made the ceiling fall."

In earnest James replies, "On you." 

Teddy is struck by how much responsibility the other boy is taking in this. "Yeah, I figured," is his wry response. He fingers the bump on the back of his head to emphasize his point. "I'm not leaving you though."

James grunts, impatient. "Yeah, yeah, family and all that stuff."

_He is so daft_ , Teddy thinks, breaking into one of his rare grins. "You'll go to Hogwarts with me, in two years. You did magic, James."

***

There are only a few more days before the last. It is a time set between the vibrant blossoming of flowers and spirits and the season in which leaves yellow and descend from gnarled, remorseful branches. The sun, optimistic, continues to shine nevertheless, shafts of sentimental light striking the fields.

James is finally free from his worries about being a squib. Yet he will have to face his best friend's departure as soon as one fear subsides. He tries not to think about it though. It is unlikely that he feels cheerful, that the light from the sky reflecting off the contentment in his eyes, that the late-summer wind is running through his already messy hair. James holds his broom tightly in his hands as he walks down from the grassy hill where his home perches, and takes one last look. He grips the handle of the broom tightly, like he is afraid that the broom will fly away on its own without him. 

His steps are light-hearted against blades of crisp grass.

His parents are worriers, but a broomstick isn't one of the things on their list of Objects James Should Never Get His Hands in Order to Prevent Catastrophic Repercussions, since his parents were both at one point Quidditch stars, in school for his dad and professionally for his mum. 

The broom had been a gift from Uncle Ron from less than two years ago “I wrapped it the Muggle way—without magic. It looks like rubbish, doesn't it?” his uncle had said, in wonder, rather amused. And then he handed the package to James. Even with the horrid wrappings, the shape of a broom was unmistakable to the eye beneath the paper, the roughness of which feels tingling beneath his hands.

"Is it..." James had gasped.

Blithely, the other answers, "A joke? Yeah, actually. Not a very funny one though.”

James's eyes were as round as galleons when he tore the brown paper, sheet by sheet, like the petals of a flower, off the package. "It—it's brilliant!" he had exclaimed, nearly speechless as he gazed at the tall man. "Thank you!" 

It was a broom, for of course it would be James's own godfather who got him his first broomstick, a real one, as Sirius had given his father his first broomstick and his dad had given Teddy, which he is insanely dangerously on. "It's so brilliant. So, so, so..."

"Brilliant?" the other offered, grinning.

"Yeah, that."

"You're welcome, James. It's not a problem to me, as I am sometimes known as brilliant." His blue eyes sparkle like sunlit water when he grins, as though there is little in this world of that can bother him at the moment, even if both Hugo and Rose were squirming determinedly in his arms as he spoke to the boy. James could tell that one-year-old Hugo had those very same starry eyes.

James is flying over the countryside as he remembers this, all the crooks and crannies of memory oft forgotten. The sky retains the perfect conditions for the flying practice of a reckless, energetic nine-year-old and he mounts his broom like it is an extension of his body, like wood and flesh had become one. He spots two familiar figures below him—Teddy, appearing to be thoroughly confused, and Victoire.

Swooping down in a single graceful movement, he calls, "Oi, Teddy! Victoire!"

Teddy wears a green t-shirt that sinks into the hollow spaces of his thin body. He casts his yellow gaze upon James, calm, collected while Victoire _beams_ , leans over James delicately, and pecks him on the cheek. She is moonlight, both faraway, luminescent in night and day when her silver hair grazes James neck and her lips brush his cheek. "Aunt Ginny told us you'd be here, getting yourself into trouble," she teases, mischief fluttering through her fine features like butterflies. 

"I'm not in trouble!" James snorts.

Rolling her eyes, Victoire replies in her light, merry voice, "Psh. That's what they all say, eh Teddy?"

James can feel the sting of Victoire's beauty, as sharp and acute as a slender paper cut.

"No doubt about it," Teddy says, chiming in. 

She grins, a shadow of her father's easy smile. "I do love how we think alike, Ted."

"As great minds often do," he agrees, gently.

"I'm standing right here, listening, y'know?"

Ignoring him, Victoire says to Teddy, "Potter's rather indignant today, isn't he?"

"Bullies, you lot are!"

"It amuses me," says she, wickedly, as James climbs off his broom in a sharp movement.

"It's not fair! It's two against one!" protests James. "And _I'm_ not the menace of a broomstick, eh Teddy?" he adds pointedly, making a swift loop on his own broom, knowing he is being rash and insensitive and foolish by taunting him like this. Yet Teddy is so _good_ and _gifted_ that he can't help but feel proud of the slight, slim advantage he holds over the older boy. So that at least he can deserve his friendship that way. So that Teddy won't forget him at Hogwarts.

***

Orange clings to the darkening horizon in broad brush strokes as James counts the lonely stars that peer at him beneath curtains of fading light. There are six, exactly the number of members in his family—him, Mum, Dad, Lily, Albus. And Teddy.

James haven't discussed what he had done to Teddy with his dad still. "Why do you suppose it happened?" His dad is beside him in a moment, ruffling James's hair with scarred hands larger than his own. He doesn't need to ask what exactly does the boy mean. "Everyone's magic manifests itself in different ways, James. Bouts of strong emotion is one of those. Teddy is your best friend and brother and all."

"Yeah, but why couldn't it have been something simple, like growing hair? I'd like having long hair," James declares, and bitterness spills into his words. "It's not fair."

His dad's lips curl into a grin. "Well, your Grandmum Weasley'll have a fit if we let you have long hair—send me howlers and all that," he tells him, wincing at the thought of displeasing Grandmum. A touch of humor streaks James's features like raindrops on glass.

"But I shouldn't have gotten upset. It was horrid," he protests. Anger had been suffocation, the overshadowing of fact and fiction, smothering pain. "It wouldn't have happened if I—"

"What? Didn't care about Teddy? It's not wrong to feel upset about someone you love leaving," interrupts Harry Potter, gently. "Given, 'upset' doesn't usually involve a hole in the ceiling, but if you're going to love, then you've got to take everything that comes with it."

"Yes, yes, love makes the world go around and all of that." James rolls his eyes good-naturedly. If only love is the only variable. If only children didn't lose control of their magic. If only he can reach out and make all this happen instead of making hollow wishes.

"To put it bluntly, yeah. But I don't want to give you your own set of morals, like you are meant for certain beliefs and certain tasks, your future set in stone. Like you're nothing but a tool--" Frowning, the older man pauses, turning over words and syllables in his mind. He pushes his glasses higher up on his nose with the back of his hand though a clearer eyesight will not aid him in seeking the truth. An eloquence that his son envies slips into his voice when he says, "What I'm trying to say it, there are always choices and choices."

"I," James says. He thinks he can only begin to understand what his father is trying to communicate, that it will require more time, more experience for him to dive deeper into comprehension. He thinks he needs more tears, laughter, pain—just more life. "He's leaving for Hogwarts tomorrow, right?" He bites his tongue, hating that he has nothing better to say except the obvious.

"We're going to see him off, of course. Don't look so stricken, it's only  two years before you join him and his grandmum will probably force him back for all the vacations."

"Dad, two years is practically _forever_!" he whines.

"That's an exaggeration if there ever was one." _But really, it's not_ , thinks James, cringing inwardly. 

The stars marking the night sky silver are bright now, but the light only serves to reflect the dimness that remains.

***

Packed suitcases lend such a finality to everything. His entire life is packed away within worn brown leather and sturdy buckles. It is too strange to see his bookshelves left bare without the strain of even a signle dog-eared page atop them. His room, once his mother's, is empty in the way that his heart is filled with words and feelings that turn against him.

"It's nearly time, Teddy."

The last sliver of this phase of his life is in his hands, a photograph of his parents' wedding, sealed inside a tarnished frame on which his father's initials are engraved in script. R. J. L. Teddy does not look at the photograph. He cannot allow his thumbs to slide over their smiling faces longingly.

"It is, isn't it?" he answers in wonder. He glances at each of his four white walls and tries to take in as much of this room as possible, every corner, every crevice, the four mahogany bedposts, a too-wide mattress, bookshelves rising from floor to ceiling.

He can feel his wand, its promise of magic dizzying, in the pocket of his trousers. _At last it is goodbye_ , he thinks. It's quite silly, really, for it is not as though he is walking through that short doorway for the last time. Through the doorway his grandmother stands, her worries evident in the fine creases of her skin. "Have you got everything packed, love?" she asks, for the fourth time, in her whisper-soft voice. Teddy nods while his luggage lifts off into midair at a casual flick of Grandmum's wand. "Good lad. Well, then, Harry's waiting for us in the car, dear."

Though Harry had offered, Grandmum had been the one to take him in after both her husband, daughter, and daughter's husband had ended their lives fighting Voldemort. For eleven years Grandmum had given him love, given him warmth when there was hardly anyone else for him, taught him to walk, and read, and write.

"Do... do you think I'll do well in Hogwarts?" he stammers, nervously.

She holds out a lined, long-fingered hand as an invitation for his. Forgetting his anxieties for just a fleeting moment, Teddy slips his hand into hers, noting that her hand, fragile and thin, is like a snowflake. There is nothing he can do besides this small act of loving her.

"I _know_ you will. Both your mum and your dad spent some of their best days there, Teddy."

His mum and dad... Those simple words bring a twinge into his heart. "Did you?"

She laughs, then closes her eyes, a smile playing on her thinning lips. The lines on her face smooth away for a faraway expression, further than the school itself. "That I did. How shall I put it—in Hogwarts, you are free to grow into whoever you want to be. You are freer there, than anywhere else in the world that I know, even if not everyone is pleasant and the lessons are hard. And you don't forget it."

"It sounds simply wonderful," Teddy says, slowly tasting each syllable before setting them free. "Like an oasis."

"That it is." She squeezes his hand.

"Should I not fear it then?"

Love overcomes her gaze when it meets his, and perhaps with a touch of sadness for the losses of the parents whose blood runs thick through his veins, for the fact that she is telling the boy these things because she is alive and they are not. "I remember being terribly frightened of leaving home for the first time, years and years and years ago, myself. I think everyone was shaking in their school robes on the train, but that might be why I love Hogwarts so. Don't we all fear the things we love?"

"I suppose--"

"OI TEDDY LUPIN WHERE ARE YOU WE GROW IMPATIENT!" It is James's voice, without a single doubt, shouting at the top of his lungs, which is a very great height indeed, while standing cross-armed on the front porch, Teddy imagines. Such power do his vocal cords possess that Teddy can see three exclamation marks behind each shout. His grandmother's lips quirk. "COME ON COME ON COME ON COME ON!" Perhaps James's voice is worthy of even four exclamation marks. It rings and carries like a chime.

Lily's softer voice echoes her older brother's sentiments, " _Ted-eee! Come_!"

"We're coming, James," Teddy says hurriedly, wondering if his response can even penetrate the wall of the other's sound. "We'd best get going, or he'll tear the cottage down."

"I can only hope to have _half_ as much energy as that boy."

"I think we all do." One, two, three, four, five leaps and he is out the door, back facing his grandmother's broad smile.

James does not have his arms folded across his chest, as Teddy had guessed. They are preoccupied, wrapped around the circumference of a metal cage in the shape of a long dome. "Look at her!" the boy is saying, head nodding at the object in his arms. "We have procured for you an owl—an avian of pure greatness!"

"I—she's great—brilliant—why did you---didn't have to--" he babbles, any coherence too far from his reach, as Ginny ruffles his hair affectionately.

It is a snowy owl they got him. Her plumage is as colorless as her eyes are vivid, her wings folded against her sides gracefully when, sideways, she watches him. She makes soft, beautiful sounds beneath those white feathers that cloak her. The curve of her beak is perfect. Her eyes. The tips of her feathers. Her scent.

"Just say 'thank you', Teddy." Harry is wearing a wicked grin that almost swells into a laugh and Teddy remembers how he had once told him about Hedwig, his first owl. But how can he ever hope to deserve this owl? "And name her. It's rather difficult calling her 'the owl' all the time."

"Thank you so, so much," he whispers. His voice is in gasps, is barely substantial, as James hands the cage and the owl to him, cheerful. Their eyes meet in a most elemental way. "I—I think I'll name him..."

"Yeah?" James's eyes widen in anticipation.

"Ophelia." _The name is magic_ , he thinks dreamily. "Ophelia." He needed to say it again, to make sure it's real, that all this is real. He bites his cheek in determination, and the pain is real. The smell of leather and lemons is real when he climbs into Harry's car after his grandmum, head accidentally bumping into the top of the car.

He fits in between Grandmum and James. "Urgh, get your hair out of my face, Lily!" James complains, squeezed next to his two younger siblings. She kicks him.

"She's definitely your sister, James," Teddy comments, surveying the red-haired girl. It's impossible that she is now old enough to kick her older brother. He can still remember when she was small enough to be cradled in his also-smaller arms, making laughing sounds that were especially for him. But of course back then he had no wand in his pocket and owl on his lap. Time is strange.

"Wait until she turns on you!" James responds wickedly, tickling his sister until she backs away from him into Albus. 

The rest of the car ride is quiet, peaceful. Despite the enchantments cast on the plain vehicle, Teddy, perhaps a little too crowded and a little too warm, is surrounded by most of the family he knows in the world. 


End file.
